Wavemobile Warn UK 2G Switch-off May Impact Sizeable Number of Devices
A number of mobile operators, including O2 and EE, have already set out tentative plans for phasing-out existing 2G mobile services. But new data supplied by rural connectivity provider Wavemobile suggests that quite a few connections are still 2G-only, and thus closing the service will be more complex than the prior 3G switch-off.
Just to recap. The government and all major UK mobile operators have already agreed to phase-out existing 2G and 3G signals by 2033 (here), which will free up radio spectrum bands so that they can be used to further improve the network coverage and mobile broadband speeds of more modern 4G and 5G networks, as well as future 6G services. The switch-off will also reduce the operators’ costs and power consumption.
So far, EE and Vodafone have already completed their 3G switch-off (here and here), while Three UK has largely almost completed it too (here) and O2 are due to start the process in April 2025 (here). However, the 3G switch-off was not a perfect process, and some areas haven’t yet seen an improvement in 4G to compensate. But other areas did see improvements and, generally speaking, the phasing out of 3G has been a relatively smooth process.
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The story for 2G was always going to be more complicated than 3G, not least because older 2G signals remain useful as a low-power fallback when 3G, 4G or 5G isn’t present and are still necessary for some rural areas, as well as for particular applications (e.g. certain Internet of Things (IoT) / M2M services and energy Smart Meters).
Nevertheless, EE is about to start the process of encouraging some customers to move off 2G and on to their more modern (4G and 5G) network, although the provider has made clear that they “will not be closing our 2G network until later this decade“ (here). Similarly, O2 expects to start shifting their first customers off 2G this year (here), but like EE they haven’t yet set a solid date for the final switch-off and expect the process to take some time.
Wavemobile’s Findings
For those who don’t know, Wavemobile operates a Small Cell based network and has around 40 active cells in “total not-spot areas” (i.e. usually serving rural communities and tourist areas). For example, West Wales, the Lake District and Scotland have the most density, but this is still quite a tiny network at the moment, at least in comparison to the major mobile operators.
Generally, devices (e.g. Smartphones and other mobile networking kit) will only access their network if they have nothing else available from their home operator, which means that Wavemobile is able to see some connectivity trends that might otherwise go unnoticed.
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For example, Anthony Timson, Wavemobile’s Technical Director, recently provided ISPreview with some visibility around the number of 2G vs 4G devices that have accessed their network over the past year – between January 2024 and January 2025. The results reveal that they saw a total of around 1.67 million device connections (includes roaming users) and around 13.4% of those (225k) were still 2G-only.
Anthony further noted that their own network marginally increased in size over this period, and it’s very seasonal, but the number of non-4G capable devices doesn’t seem to be substantially dropping. We expect that quite a few of those 2G-only connections may be coming from IoT roaming SIMs, rather than consumers, but it’s harder to get a read on that.
Suffice to say that while such connections consume very little data, there are still quite a lot of them to tackle and that helps to illustrate why the 2G switch-off is going to be a much more challenging, and slower, process than the 3G one.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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wave isn’t an mvno mark! 😀
I’m sure it may cause some impact, but it’s also *at least* 7 years away.
But we’re also talking about a good proportion of these 2G connections being IoT and embedded devices that are broadly hidden from view. And even if you were to mailshot every address in the UK is your average consumer going to know to question the capability of their leccy meter / intruder alarm / leak detection / fire system / automated agricultural machinery / health monitoring / other random device with some call home function to keep going once 2G is switched off.
Could be tomorrow if they wanted to it’s set ‘by 2030’ meaning any network operator could switch it off tomorrow and they’ve made the grade and ticked the box. Put it this way a lot of electric vehicle charge points will be screwed if this happens
The biggest risk of the 2G turn off will be the end of being able to take any random phone and being guaranteed to be able to make a phone call
Calling on 2G and 3G requires no special approval to make a call, but for 4G and 5G networks can operate an approve list for VoLTE and VoNR, meaning after the 2G switch off if the networks wanted to they could only allow phones bought from them to work effectively destroying the sim free phone market and reintroducing sim lock by the back door
Indeed. My partner had to change phones from Blackberry Key2 (wanted a proper keyboard, has had Blackberry for a long time, and Xperia Mini pro before that) to something new because Three would not support VoLTE on 4G for that phone. Phone was working for data just not voice. (The same phone currently works on O2).
not aware of the UK networks operating such a list. I’ve happily used VoLTE on phones that no UK network operator has ever sold, and I have not had to modify them in any way. You just need a competent manufacturer who can include the settings.
There are plenty of VoLTE capable devices out there, as low as £10-15 new.
@Ivor they seem to be much better but it’s not guaranteed, I have a Motorola One Action, VoLTE works great on Three and EE but on Vodafone there’s no option and it only will use 2G for calls
Also there are lots of older 4G phones that never had VoLTE support, yes they are old devices but they were sold as 4G and now they won’t work and will most likely be blocked from connecting to the networks once 2G is switched off (for safety reasons as there is no call functionality)
I have no doubt that we’ll have the same issue with all the early 5G devices not being able to make calls using VoNR or even use 5G standalone at all, it’s either lack of forward thinking or planned obsolescence to make sure new phones have to be purchased
Maybe all 2G frequencies should be retracted form all operators, and then a single UK wide coverage map drawn with the least bandwidth physical necessary, with no overlap needed between operators. Then under an universal shared backup network plan, all MNO would have to share support (cost and infrastructure) of an ‘any customer’ roamable product.
This could arguably help with a number of the PSTN / copper backup plans too.
Volkswagen cars will be a casualty of this as they have 2g sim cards embedded in them in order to control charging from the VW app. I asked VW what their plans were when there’s no more 2g network, and they said not our problem – changing SIM cards would be prohibitively expensive.
I wonder how many of those 2g devices will still be in warranty come 2033? None I imagine, so it is really only a problem for the owners of those devices.
“so it is really only a problem for the owners of those devices”
Which is objectivly worse than if it was the supplier’s problem as end users are unlikely to even be aware until things stop working, let alone have any ability to upgrade the hardware.
There is an emergency services issue in rural and upland areas where there is 2G but not 3 or 4G and probably never will be.
If someone gets into trouble how do you call mountain rescue?
Only solution at the moment is the new iPhone satellite service.